Sequential bidding by same person on their own bid?

[stein.master]

Hi, first time that I'm interested in bidding on an eBay item that ends tomorrow and noticed that the same bidder keeps automatically increasing his own bid when he was the most recent auto  bidder. Looked at hidden bids and the automatic bids are out of sync in terms of the date (separate bidders). Am I missing something here? Have read about shill bidding and am not sure what is occurring. Would like to provide item # to get feedback and do not know if that is OK to do. Thanks.

[kxeron]

eBay does permit automated programs to perform bidding on people's behalf. In practice, eBay auctions are not like real-life auctions. You have  to assume you have zero reaction time on any bids because of course, a computer program can detect your bid and increase its own bid within milliseconds. With this in mind, bid as high as you are willing to if you are manually bidding.

There's no such thing as "Going... going... going... GONE" on eBay. it's just "GONE". There's no outwitting others either in timing or hoping to "psyche them out" with determination, as if it's a popular item, someone is pretty much guaranteed to have a robot bidding.

With this in mind, you pretty much have to treat eBay auctions as a blind tendering process, where like poker you don't know what others' cards are, you don't know what others have their robots programmed to bid. Do not trust the current bid price, ever — that's how bid sniping by robots happen. Cover up that part of the screen and ask yourself "What would I fork over for that".

[reallynicestamps]

Shilling is quite different.

A shill bidder does not want to win. He wants you to win at your highest bid.

So he bids until you are outbid and then retracts his bid.

The method of outwitting a shill is to bid once and bid your maximum. But do it at the last moment, giving him no time to retract.

Automatic bidding is like bidding against 'book'bids, where the auctioneer has received bids (by mail, usually) and uses those bids to find the highest bidder, which may be the book or may be the floor (you).

On eBay the book is the guy who bid early, bid his maximum, and lets it ride.

It is not the last bidder who wins, it is the highest.

That may be you, nibbling away at the high bid you can see.

It may be the early bidder whose maximum you can't see, but whose high bid you are forcing higher by nibble bidding.

Or it may be the 'sniper', live or electronic service, who swoops in at the last minute with a 'nuclear' bid that wipes everyone else out.

Bid once.

Bid your maximum.

If someone else winner, that sucker paid too much.

There will be another streetcar along any minute.

[pjcdn2005]

An item number might be deleted by the moderators but you can try or if you want to send me a private message with the item number I can have a look. You can click on my name here to send a private message or click on my feedback number and send a message from my feedback page.  I'm not an expert by an means but I might notice something that you don't.